As a high school history student, I studied the abolition of slavery, the progressive era, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement with both excitement and envy. I perused primary sources to better understand the opinions, emotions, and sense of righteousness these citizens shared and experienced. I remember the abolitionist leader and former slave Olaudah Equiano’s narrative arguing that abolitionists be “named with praise and honor, [those] who generously proposed and stood forth in the cause of humanity, liberty, and good policy; and brought to the ear of the legislature designs worthy of royal patronage and adoption.” In the same vein, I wanted my life to be “named with praise and honor” for helping secure comparable justice. By participating in a momentous social movement, I believed my life would reflect meaning and purpose and perhaps, as an added bonus, come to occupy a page of history itself.
Social movements are a direct response to failed democracy. When democratic governments turn a deaf ear to citizen concerns and desires, movements consolidate these concerns and then turn up the volume. Past social movements in the United States utilized a two-step process: people adopted a moral cause and then built a movement to educate the public. For example, the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s first underscored the moral failings of segregation and inequality and demanded liberty and justice for all. Second, barber shops, beauty parlors, and churches served as the movement’s informational hub, spreading news and sparking activism. Leaders and activists left them prepared to educate the rest of the country. The civil rights movement swept the nation, creating a much healthier American democracy with the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Fast forward to the 21st century, where climate change threatens all we know and love. From socio-economic impacts to complete loss of life and culture, we stand at a unique moment in history. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the “[w]arming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.” Estimates for the cumulative economic impact of rising sea levels, more frequent hurricanes and droughts, higher rates of infectious diseases, and other climate caused effects are in the trillions of dollars. More importantly, global warming will displace millions of people leading to increased warfare, suffering, and ultimate death.
Global warming offers a distinctive challenge to the social movement paradigm. Although Americans widely recognize that global warming exists, they view the repercussions as distant and removed: few care about the potential flooding of Indonesian archipelagos in fifty years, while many care about health care and the Iraq War today. Yet major U.S. newspapers carry weekly stories on local, current impacts—from threatened maple trees in Vermont to wildfires in Colorado and hurricanes in Louisiana. To move beyond climate change cognizance to action, people must be engaged in their individual communities, via families, schools, religious institutions, colleagues, and clubs. In this way, citizens move the discussion from global warming is coming, to it’s here and what do we do now.
Given the present failure of government to address global warming, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play an important role in connecting individual citizen advocacy with meaningful government response. Not only are NGOs composed of and directed by citizens like you and me, but years of experience allow them to efficiently organize and educate on a massive scale. NGOs like Greenpeace, Climate Action Network, Environmental Defense, and Natural Resources Defense Council educate the global citizenry about climate change and its consequences. They petition governments for policy change as well as challenge judicial decisions and administrative rulemakings. Asha-Rose Migiro, Deputy-Secretary General of the UN, stated that the “United Nations depends upon the advocacy skills, creative resources and grass-roots reach of civil society organizations in all our work.” Today, NGOs have become “the world’s third superpower.”
In the face of government inaction, Australia provides an example of individuals and NGOs working together on progressive climate policy. Although Australia exports the largest amount of coal in the world and joined the U.S. in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, record drought and its toll on the agricultural sector—particularly cotton exports—raised Australian concern over global warming. As drought forced farmers off their lands and into cities, people sympathized with the plight of the agricultural sector. As education and awareness grew, people questioned the impacts of global warming on Australia’s ecology and lifestyle—from the current drought to Great Barrier Reef destruction and the spread of disease.
The Queensland Conservation Council responded to public opinion by pressing both the government and the courts for greenhouse gas mitigation. This massive turn in public perception ultimately led to a political reevaluation of Australia’s climate change position. In fact, the Australian federal election in November 2007 marked the world’s first climate change election. Not only did the victorious party offer the strongest climate policy, but the entering prime minister’s first action was to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Australia’s climate change movement progressed from individual and NGO action to an eventual political response.
There is no reason why we cannot do this in the United States. After we engage in civil society and stress regional climate implications, U.S. NGOs will provide the next link by consolidating our voice and directing it at influential decision makers. Step It Up, for example, organized the first open source, web-based day of action devoted to stopping climate change. In April of 2007, more than 1,400 communities across the U.S. joined force to offer the following explicit message: “Step It Up, Congress: Cut Carbon 80% by 2050.” Not only does Step It Up bring together individual voices, but it also works with other organizations like 1Sky to further centralize the global warming movement. Through mobilizing Americans around the climate change crisis, U.S. NGOs can help build enough political will to deliver real, meaningful, long term solutions.
Just like Olaudah Equiano chose between enjoying his newly won freedom or devoting his life to the abolitionist movement, people today must choose between two divergent paths. One path allows us to sit back, place our feet on the couch, and adopt a business as usual approach as the mercury continues to rise. The other path allows us to join an already growing social movement by taking action to stabilize and then reverse greenhouse gas emissions. Because the world’s fate rests in our hands, choose wisely— not just for your sake, but for that of your children and future generations!
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